When you open a book,” the sentimental library posters said, “anything can happen.” This was so. A book of fiction was a bomb. It was a land mine you wanted to go off. You wanted it to blow your whole day. Unfortunately, hundreds of thousands of books were duds. They had been rusting out of everyone’s way for so long that they no longer worked. There was no way to distinguish the duds from the live mines except to throw yourself at them headlong, one by one.

Books swept me away, this way and that, one after the other; I made endless vows according to their lights for I believed them.

Nothing on earth is more gladdening than knowing we must roll up our sleeves and move back the boundaries of the humanly possible once more.

She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.

There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been.

He judged the instant and let go; he flung himself loose into the stars.

There is no such thing as an artist: there is only the world lit or unlit as the light allows. When the candle is burning, who looks at the wick? When the candle is out, who needs it?